Colorado Monument Offers More Amazing Sights to See

One of the important lessons one must learn about traveling is the need to be flexible. When I booked our hotel in the wrong town, we ended up closer to our next destination so we visited Black Canyon of the Gunnison a day earlier than planned. So with an extra day on our hands, I cast about for something to do. We decided to visit Colorado National Monument.

Colorado Monument is a little over an hour north of Montrose where we were staying. It is a national monument, but in many ways has the qualities for being a national park. It became a national monument in 1911 when President Taft declared it as such. To become a national park takes an act of Congress. People who live in the area are about evenly split with some wanting it to become a national park while others want it to stay a monument. So far Congress has not changed it.

Visitors can enter the park from either Grand Junction or Fruita. Basically there is a road that crosses through the monument giving stunning views along the way. Much like our trip through the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, we drove along and stopped at the various viewpoints. The main difference is most of the viewpoints are near the road.

We arrived at the park from Grand Junction. After entering the park, the road very quickly ascends. We managed to find one place to park and look down at the road below, but no official viewpoints are in this area. Once we reached the top of the mountain, then we began to see the beauty and wonders of the area.

Our first stop was at Cold Shivers Point. On this particular day it seemed aptly named. There was a strong, cold wind blowing when we got out to the viewpoint. In fact it blew my hat off. Fortunately my hat didn’t go far. The viewpoint revealed a large canyon, Columbus Canyon. Looking across the canyon one can see various layers of color. The red rock layers were in between layers of lighter rock. On the floor of the canyon evergreen trees dotted the view. At the Black Canyon of the Gunnison the cliff’s rocks were vertical. Here the rock layers are horizontal.

The next overlook allows tourists to look down the length of a different canyon, Red Canyon. Here one can easily see the canyon formation. Visitors can also see trees growing on the canyon walls where dirt has piled up a bit to create enough soil for trees to survive.

The next stop is Ute Canyon. At this stop the park has a trail to follow down to the viewpoint. Along the way signs inform about some of the plant life in the area and how the animals use or benefit from the plants. In some cases they are food sources; in others they become shelter. Much of the information I had seen in other places we stopped, but it was good to see it offered.

This viewpoint at Ute Canyon was also a very windy spot. Probably the worst of the day. I walked very slowly and braced myself against the posts of the fence around the viewpoint before taking any photos. I didn’t wear my hat. Visitors can look down the valley and see the canyon floor and walls. One can also begin to observe rock formations that are separated from the canyon walls. These would become more prominent as we traveled farther into the park.

A short distance down the road took us to Fallen Rock Overlook. Basically the view here shows an area where rock has avalanched down the side of the cliff. It shows the erosion that takes place over time.

Upper Ute Canyon Overlook was another windy location. It offered a wide field of vision so we could see a lot of interesting elements on the canyon walls. However, one of the fun things they encouraged here was the idea of echos, your voice bouncing off the canyon walls and returning to you. People would yell and say different things, and then we would hear the echo. It was fun, especially for some of the kids that were there.

At this point in our day we took a break from sightseeing as such. We stopped at a location which had a bathroom, and we noticed it was also a trailhead. Two trails started here with the shortest being five miles. We weren’t up to that much of a hike, but we did follow the trail for a mile and a half or so. There were no amazing viewpoints from the trail. Any views were of the canyon walls above us not the ones below us. On thing I did note was that the color of the dirt on the trail would change from red to a lighter brown. Of course I also enjoyed taking photos of the trees.

After our hike we continued on to Artists Point. There is a location in Yellowstone National Park with the same name. Each is trying to emphasis the variety and intensity of color in the area. It also emphasizes the different shapes. We began to see more of the stand alone rock formations here. The area is vast and impossible to get everything into one photo.

Just a little bit farther down the road we arrived at Coke Ovens Overlook. Since it was so close to the previous spot, we thought we would see pretty much the same thing. Instead we saw these rather unusual rock formation which were named for similarly shaped brick structures called coke ovens.

Another large area was revealed at our next stop, Monument Canyon. Here a number of stand alone rock formations stand on the left side of the valley. In the distance a break in the wall reveals the city and civilization beyond the canyon walls.

Grand View lived up to its name. The outlook was a bit of a ways from the road and sat on a rock with views all around. One can see a variety of different rock formations from groups of rocks to individual ones. This was almost the last stop, and it certainly gives a wonderful view of a lot of the types of formations we had seen throughout our drive.

One last viewpoint was to see a tall formation called Independence Monument. It stands alone and has become a favorite of rock climbers who like to scale its walls.

With that we would stop at the Visitor Center just a bit before it closed and look around. From there it was still a few miles to the exit. Road work was going on, and we were stopped due to a one way road section. In that section was the final major point of interest, the Balanced Rock. Unfortunately the viewpoint was between flaggers so I didn’t feel I could stop. Silvette was taking a video of our drive and captured the rock in her video. She was able to pull out an image from it to share. We had one more stop before leaving the park so I grabbed a final photo there as well.

Our excursion to see the Colorado Monument had been a perfect solution for our extra day. It reminded us more of the parks in Utah, especially the various rock formations. Colorado has certainly presented a number of unique and interesting places for us to see God’s creative hand at work. Has anyone else experienced the Colorado Monument? Share your thoughts in the comment box below. I’d love to hear from you. Until next week keep traveling.